by Deborah Quinn | May 10, 2013 | family, Kids, Parenting
I’ve just suffered through two school projects (one for each child) that involved–god save me–glitter. Plus glue, posterboard, construction paper, some rudimentary elements of design, and a smattering of factoids gleaned from actual books (!) and...
by Deborah Quinn | Jul 8, 2012 | Abu Dhabi, Education, expat, family, Kids, Parenting
The last day of school finally arrived. July 5. It’s been a long year and now, officially, summer has begun. We went out to dinner that night to celebrate and in the middle of dinner, Liam sagged against the back of his chair like a marionette whose strings had...
by Deborah Quinn | Jan 31, 2012 | Abu Dhabi, Children, family, food
It started with french fries. Caleb asked if we could make purple french fries, like we used to do in New York, with the purple potatoes from the Union Square Farmer’s Market. No purple potatoes here that I can see, but I decided to make french fries anyway,...
by Deborah Quinn | Jan 25, 2012 | Abu Dhabi, Children, Education, family, growing up, Kids, Parenting
When Liam and Caleb were little, they both loved Going on a Bear Hunt. Remember that? Going on a bear hunt. We’re going to catch a big one. What a beautiful day! We’re not scared! And then there’s the long tall grass to get through, swishy-swashy;...
by Deborah Quinn | Sep 16, 2011 | Abu Dhabi, Children, Education, expat, language
Caleb came home from his third day at his new school and said “look, mommy, I can write my name in Arabic!” And he did: It occurs to me that he may have actually written “suck it,” and I will never know. But still…he did it in Arabic. Linguists talk about a “critical...